News & Advice

What Happens When a Law Is Broken on a Plane

Finding the in-flight perpetrator is straightforward. Punishing them can get complicated.
Crime on a Plane
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We’ve all seen the stories of air rage, racist behavior, and sexual harassment affecting passengers on flights around the world. But when the law is broken mid-flight—some 30,000 feet above any criminal court—whose job is it to respond? It is, of course, complicated.

The first thing to know is that every airline's number one goal, as they'll tell you multiple times in the pre-flight video, is safety. That means that ideally, airline staff will be able to prevent a difficult situation before it even takes place. Even at the gate, airline employees are keeping their eyes out for intoxicated or aggressive passengers who could affect the safety or operation of the flight, says Juliea Braithwaite, who oversees safety for the Bahamas Civil Aviation Authority. "If a problem starts with unruly passengers before boarding, the airline will do what they can to calm them before the flight begins," Braithwaite says. "If that fails, they can take the decision to work with airport police to get them arrested."

Once wheels are up, responsibility falls to the flight attendants to monitor for any trouble. In most cases, flight attendants are trained to diffuse situations whenever they occur. If the cabin crew has difficulty restoring order, flights often have air marshals and non-working crew members flying to their next post on board who will intervene to help. According to Article 10 of the Tokyo Convention, which still governs much of aviation crime today, in a situation where anyone, including a passenger, believes someone near them poses a threat to either the plane or another passenger, they have the right to take "reasonable preventive measures" without asking permission.

If a situation can’t be controlled by the flight attendant, passengers, or an on-board air marshal, the pilot will be quickly notified. Those pre-flight speeches pilots give about how they're the ones in charge of your safety? That isn’t just about the flight path. Once wheels are up, the pilot also becomes commander-in-chief. Pilots are the only ones on board that can order a passenger be restrained during the flight and the ones who decide whether the plane needs to land somewhere sooner for the situation to be dealt with, according to the Tokyo Convention.

Pilots are also the ones in charge of reporting any incidents to air traffic control below, who will then notify the in-airport police that an incoming flight has an unruly passenger on board. That's what leads to a police presence at the gate once the plane lands. In these cases, the other passengers are to stay in their seats until the police have come on board and escorted the offender out. Case in point: This April, on a flight from Dublin to Malta, intoxicated passengers started to fight with each other and verbally abuse the crew—they were met by police upon landing and arrested.

The pilot also has the right to let things go, and can choose to excuse bad behavior as long as it hasn't caused harm to the aircraft or lasting harm to any passengers. According to Braithwaite: "If there's a scenario, but the altercation is resolved and nothing damaged the aircraft, the pilot might decide that there's a human factor, [like they're] on their fourth flight of the day."

If a case is so severe that it comes before a court, it's up to the discretion of a judge whether the accused face a fine or jail time. While the Tokyo Convention gives explicit jurisdiction rights to the airline's country of registration, it also leaves the door open for for several other nations to seek to extradite the offender in order to exercise their criminal jurisdiction, including the country of the offender, of the victim (if there is one) and more. It may seem like a chaotic resolution, but the idea is to prevent a case like 1949's United States vs. Cordova, where a judge dismissed charges against a man who bit the pilot's ear and struck a flight attendant during a flight to New York because American laws at the time didn't apply to crimes committed while flying over an ocean.

Still, issues persist with the 56-year-old Tokyo Convention. According to Braithwaite, smaller countries have consistently complained to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) that their national laws—which the convention defers to—aren't always up to date with the constantly shifting intricacies of global aviation. To help, ICAO delegates have been traveling to such territories to help update legislation, and in 2014, the organization put forward the Montreal Protocol, which extends automatic jurisdiction over a criminal offense to the flight's destination, as well as the aircraft's country of registration, closing a key loophole that was helping offenders walk free when their flight landed in a different place to where the aircraft was registered. However, only 20 governments so far have ratified the agreement, and the protocol needs 22 to come into force. Until then, as ever, it's on airlines to do all they can to monitor the conditions that lead to air rage—and on all of us to attempt to find our in-flight happy place, regardless of loud neighbors or delayed take-offs.